Yesterday I said we were playing a “choose your own adventure” in reading works by creators you already had opinions about. Yesterday, we walked down Path #1 with a work that was pleasantly excellent. Today we’re doing a second path, as we look at Even Though We’re Adults, Volume 2 by Shimura Takako.
In Volume 1, we met Akari, a lesbian who has had some bad luck with partners and Ayano, a married woman, for whom Akari falls. If indeed that was the sum and total of the plot, it would be merely all right, but in this series, nothing ever is exactly what it seems to be. Ayano is not at all the person she appeared to be and, we learn in this volume, there was a whole other Ayano in school, where she was tall and boyish.
Akari …well, she’s a decent human and it’s hard to not like her. She’s just looking for someone to be happy with and it’s not at all making her happy that she has feelings for a married woman. In fact, she’s pretty damn pissed about it. In this volume we also learn that she has previously been down this road and it did not go well for her, so we can completely sympathize.
Even Ayano’s husband Wataru is decent. He’s a guy whose life has been thrown into a series of chaotic situations and he’s trying to stay afloat. When his father becomes ill in Volume 2, he and Ayano get roped into moving back with his abrasive mother and shut-in sister. He too, one can completely sympathize with.
So, you may wonder why I consider this a path down the “what is this going to be like?” game. And to explain that, I have to tell you a secret. … I don’t actually like Shimura Takako’s work that much.
I don’t hate it, I just think she’s either a straight (or officially closeted) woman who has made a career of writing queer characters who…don’t act like people actually act. Her works has been insightful only rarely and sometimes torpedo their own good intentions. As a result, she’s gotten a huge amount of queer cred, most of which I think is unearned. More damning, her storytelling has been…inconsistent. Sweet Blue Flowers is a narrative mess with flashes of brilliance, but Wandering Son is literally filled with repeated scenes and conversations.. On top of that, her endings are occasionally pat and irritating. So, call me very pleasantly surprised that all the characters here (except, so far as you know) Mom, are written with nuance and sympathetic perspective.*
These characters have been written with the kind of nuance I crave in manga…especially manga written for adults. Sure, sex and violence have their place, but surely being adult means we can more layered and thoughtful writing, too, not just more violence and sex. Here everything is just working in concert to create a strong whole.
So for a creator whose work has, in the past, left me feeling disappointed or even exploited, Even Though We Are Adults is an absolute masterwork of storytelling. The art is perfectly fine, but it still is finding its stride and I talk about that in my discussion of Volume 2 in Japanese.
Ratings:
Art β 7 with flashes of 9
Story β 8 Not easy, but well told
Characters β 7 easy to sympathize with, but like? That’s another story.
Service β 0
Yuri β Yes, definitely. Akari is gay, Ayano may be bi or questioning but it’s all question marks now.
Overall β 7
*I’m not the only one to feel exactly this way, as the Mangasplaining Podcast spent an entire excellent episode talking about this series and they touch on all these things. I love this podcast, not just because some of the folk on it are friends. ^_^ It’s a great podcast for folks who love manga, I recommend it highly
Volume 3 will be available in October and while I have already reviewed it in Japanese, am looking forward to it in English as well. Translator Jocelyne Allen’s work is always fantastic. Casey Luca on adaptation, Rina Mapa on lettering and retouch, Hanase Qi’s great cover design and Shannon Fay on Editing; The entire Seven Seas team is doing excellent work here for a terrific reading experience of a complicated, adult story.
